Why does The Flat Earth Society acronym become "google"?

(via the new public administrators log)

This certainly highlights the need for us to take some plays from your book, and I have taken note and will adjust our practices accordingly.

I am also sure there was a time it was up to date with the incorrect version displaying.

What I would like to know is, if this is true...

Ok, so the reason it reverted to 2.0.6 was a botched upgrade to 2.0.14 earlier in the year that appeared to go through; this was hidden to me due to the override version in smf being set as it had thought it installed properly. Should be all good now. In the future, it should be easy to avoid this.

... then how can this also be true?

Looks like I was incorrect when I said I was sure. I did find another folder with a working 2.0.14 install that I trashed while doing this upgrade. It's possible I was thinking of that.

Joking of course, but I found this funny and relevant.



At any rate, apologies for the confusion. None of us are perfect.

If you would like to choose another person to be the point of contact, I'm happy with that too. I realize this came out of nowhere and you might not have the time you'd like to devote for it.

I'd like to take you up on this, as I've found someone far better suited to these talks on our end. However, I understand he is currently in "Quarantine" here, which is going to make it difficult to progress things. He has had some anger issues in the past, but he has improved a lot recently, which is why I have asked him to represent us on this.

Could you please restore Excelsior John as a full member of the forum here so that he can continue discussions in my stead?

Here is a link to the discussion where EJ has been asked, and has excepted this responsibility. They have freed him from purgatory over at the other site. All that is necessary now is for the admin of this site to remove him from quarantine and negotiations can proceed.

This is exciting!

That's funny. I just wrote to propose a deal 2here ej would speak through shifter since I didn't think John could lift his ban in a timely manner.

This is just excellent.

I'm more than happy to be the conduit, however given the developments on the other site where he has been lifted from purgatory and now their official representative I think in the interests of the entire flat earth collective, John needs to bring EJ into the fold on equal ground ASAP.

The importance of this can not be understated. EJ needs his purgatory lifted here and negotiations to begin. Lets get it done. The future and credibility of the Flat Earth society is at stake.

I don't moderate, so I tend not to unban people; our moderation staff is on point enough can make this decision. I do have his email, and am happy to correspond to him. If the first point fails and you still want him to represent him.

It seems questionable to use someone we banned as a contact point. Does this seem like a fruitful path to you? I'm not sure of the history here, so maybe someone can fill me in. May I ask, Why Excelsior John?

On a related note, I am happy to talk with Tom Bishop; as the greatest living zetetic debater as well as a member of your council he seems a much more appropriate choice.

Here is a link to the discussion where EJ has been asked, and has excepted this responsibility. They have freed him from purgatory over at the other site.

This sounds like the teaser plot to 48 Hrs

I don't moderate, so I tend not to unban people; our moderation staff is on point enough can make this decision. I do have his email, and am happy to correspond to him. If the first point fails and you still want him to represent him.

I am willing to reconsider if this is going to be a sticking point. My main concern is that we seem to have reached deadlock with our current approach, as neither of us is willing to budge on the forum merge issue, and neither of us is successfully convincing the other. Some new blood might help progress this further.

Another option might be to let things stand as they are for a while and then revisit the discussion ourselves in a month or two.

It seems questionable to use someone we banned as a contact point. Does this seem like a fruitful path to you? I'm not sure of the history here, so maybe someone can fill me in. May I ask, Why Excelsior John?

You may be right. He has been on much better behaviour on our forum lately (where he could post only in CN/AR until yesterday), and he is very eager to help out, so my intention was to give him a chance. If this is a problem for you, then it doesn't need to be him.

On a related note, I am happy to talk with Tom Bishop; as the greatest living zetetic debater as well as a member of your council he seems a much more appropriate choice.

I'll keep that in mind going forward. As I said, my main concern is that we seem to have hit a deadlock, so if you have any alternative suggestions to progressing I'm open to hearing them. I should probably have opened with that rather than suggesting someone out of the blue.

I love giving folks a second chance - a bit too much. I will remove his ban here based on your statements. If this turns out to be a bad idea, we can always ban him again.

I agree with your other assessments 100%. As you know, I believe the faster negotiations go the better our chances of success. If throwing someone else in the mix will help, I'm for it. On the other hand, the main sticking point may not be an issue in 6 months due to my aggressive (admittedly) plans to shift our platform to something of a different beast.

On a tangential note, I notice you don't have a full council. When are the next elections, so I can prepare once I have the required minimum posts?

As another gesture of good will, I will also help optimize your front end performance, if you would like. This also affects your ranking on google, according to them.

As a compromise, what if the forums shared an authentication system? This way, the accounts were merged, but the forum themselves were separate.

I love giving folks a second chance - a bit too much. I will remove his ban here based on your statements. If this turns out to be a bad idea, we can always ban him again.

Thanks. I will admit that I'm not 100% confident myself, but he does seem to be showing improvement. As I mentioned, we only recently allowed him to post outside of CN/AR on our forum, on the condition that he maintains good behaviour, so hopefully he will do so.

I agree with your other assessments 100%. As you know, I believe the faster negotiations go the better our chances of success. If throwing someone else in the mix will help, I'm for it. On the other hand, the main sticking point may not be an issue in 6 months due to my aggressive (admittedly) plans to shift our platform to something of a different beast.

I'm still not entirely convinced that having things go quickly is a worthy goal in and of itself, but having total deadlock is obviously also not desirable.

And yes, I will be interested to see where this forum goes. I am sceptical as to the value of two separate discussion boards, even with this one shifting to a different form, but I obviously haven't seen its final form yet.

On a tangential note, I notice you don't have a full council. When are the next elections, so I can prepare once I have the required minimum posts?

Our Zetetic Council is dead in all but name. No posts have been made in their forum for almost 2 years, and nobody really seems to mind their absence. I doubt there will be another election, and it's probably worthwhile removing that forum and user group at some stage.

As another gesture of good will, I will also help optimize your front end performance, if you would like. This also affects your ranking on google, according to them.

Thanks, I appreciate that, although I suspect we can handle it. We don't have anyone looking at optimising it right now, but I will let you know if that changes.

As a compromise, what if the forums shared an authentication system? This way, the accounts were merged, but the forum themselves were separate.

As far as I'm aware, the primary reason most people want a merged forum is to facilitate debates between the two groups. I am sceptical as to how effective such a solution would be for that, but I will give it some consideration.

How does your council being dead factor in to the democratic and distributed nature of your group?

Who makes the decisions?

How does your council being dead factor in to the democratic and distributed nature of your group?

Who makes the decisions?

For the most part, smaller decisions are made by whoever is doing the work. For instance, PizzaPlanet puts the work into managing our wiki and therefore makes most of the decisions regarding managing it. This is the "distributed" part.

Larger decisions impacting all our members, such as the specifics of any merger agreement, will usually be put to an informal vote.

On the notion of these negotiations, I would suggest that we forget about continuing talks with another point of contact right now and revisit the matter at a later date. As I said, my hope was that we could resolve the deadlock we seem to have reached, but that is clearly not working as intended. I just don't see another way forward right at the moment.

It seems to me, suggesting EJ was not to the end of resolving the deadlock (which I pushed another possible solution to), but instead to insult me personally.

Either way, if you want to discontinue talks, ok.

Locking thread.